Truly weird rank vote results (Oregon, Maine)

By Taxpayers Association of Oregon
OregonWatchdog.com

Both Oregon and Maine produced very strange results using rank voting in 2024.

OREGON SHOWED THAT THE #3 WINNER ENDED UP AS #1 WINNER:

The Oregonian has been very helpful when they produced this chart on the results of Portland’s Rank Voting for City Race #2. The left side lists the candidates with the most #1 rankings. We show with our red circle that people’s No. 3 choice (the candidate with the third most No. 1 rankings) came in first place. This shows how Rank Voting subverts people’s top choice. This weird result was overlooked since the race was open to the top three winners. If this was a one-person winner race — the wrong person would be the winner.  This fails big.

Additionally, it was discovered that when Portland voters came across a rank voting choice on the ballot that 20% skipped it (compared to non-rank voting choices on the ballot).  That is proof positive that rank voting decreases voter turnout by 20%.  A staggering failure.

Here is an example of what one of the Portland ballots looked like using rank choice voting:

MAINE SHOWED THAT BLANK BALLOTS WERE COUNTED.

The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board reports on Maine’s strange outcome.  In Maine, the vote tabulations went on for weeks for Democratic Representative candidate Jared Golden and GOP candidate Rep. Austin Theriault .

“Well, in the initial RCV tally, counting each voter’s first choice of candidate, Mr. Golden fell slightly short of a 50% majority. An organized write-in campaign won 420 votes. But what really caused the holdup was that 12,635 voters, 3.1% of the total, either wrote in somebody else or didn’t make any No. 1 selection at all, leaving that oval blank. To get Mr. Golden to a majority required checking “blank” ballots to see what those voters marked as a second choice. If there are piles of ballots that include a No. 2 selection without a No. 1, the obvious question is why. Is this a protest vote? Is it a mistake? Advocates of RCV argue that once voters get accustomed to the system, they find it easy to understand. Maybe not, since Maine has been using ranked choice since 2018.Adding second choices pushed Mr. Golden’s lead to 2,706, from 2,159. How much tax money did those days of counting consume? Now his opponent wants a recount, which could take until December. Mr. Theriault has the right to ask for this, Mr. Golden said Friday, “but the votes have been counted twice now.” No wonder that so many other states are declining to join the RCV experiment.”

The end result for Maine was weeks of delay/costs and confusion on how the winner won — which sows voters distrust in elections.

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